THE STORIES, the myths that we spin about our holidays - past, present and yet to come - are, in truth, as much a part of everyday life as distinct from it. Destinations, weather - the good, the bad and the ugly - the company, sisters, parents, friends, children, the kinds of clothes that one would wear only abroad.

The sun is always brighter in memory, the sea a deeper blue. The meals as the evening shadows lengthen, the conversations are more interesting, more distinct in memory than in the reality of it. Part of the narrative of remembered holidays is the catalogue of the books that accompany us. Appropriate to setting, to how we think of ourselves, the gap between what we intend to read and what we actually pick up is often wide indeed.

Like most people, I giggle when I come across the summer read round-ups in newspapers in which politicians (and not only) talk of the heavyweight biographies they are going to attempt, never mentioning the latest Ian Rankin or Martina Cole, although these are the novels that you see on poolside loungers and airports.

At the same time, I have done the same, packing books I've not found time for in everyday life, yet still believe will come to life in the sun.

Now middle-aged, I know what's worth taking, what's better to leave behind. I go for a mixture of some anticipated, some just out, and plenty of old favourites that conjure up times and places, reminders of different trips taken abroad and at home, the pages of familiar paperbacks with the glue brown and unstuck, the pages yellow and scratchy. Always, I return in the long afternoons to Agatha Christie. Her novels are drenched with the spirit of time and place and period, and spark in me a nostalgia for a time when life was lived more precisely, more gently. Well, despite the murders!

Christie's last published novel, Sleeping Murder (Fontana, £10/offer £9.50), came out posthumously in 1976, but was actually written during the Second World War as the last outing for Miss Marple (along with a final case for Poirot, Curtain). Both books were sealed in a bank vault for more than 30 years, and were released for publication only at the end of Christie's life.

Sleeping Murder, one of her best puzzles, with its creepy, shiny blue hands on the cover, is a classic whodunnit - a young bride from the Antipodes settles in England, in a charming house by the seaside.

But beyond the detective story, it's a novel about memory, about the shadows cast by the past, and what stands out for me is the affectionate, true characterisation of the female characters, especially the older women.

From The Times Archive: An Agatha Christie murderer

To keep the grande dame company, I'll sneak in Death in a White Tie by Ngaio Marsh (available second-hand from abebooks.co.uk), Christie's New Zealander contemporary, as well as a couple of contemporary crime writers such as Fred Vargas and Jo Nesbo.

From the Times Archive: The obituary of Ngaio Marsh

There's always a lot of argy-bargy about the value of lists (and prizes), but I remain a fan of any device that brings outstanding stories to the attention of new potential readers. It's easy to forget that even great books, classic books, need a little boost in publicity from time to time.

So in the spirit of catching up on books I missed first time round (I was at secondary school in 1973, being hopeless at science and home economics), I will read The Siege of Krishnapur by J.G.Farrell (Phonenix, £7.99/£7.59), one of the six novels nominated for the Best of the Booker.

From the Times Archive: The 1973 review of 'The Siege of Krishnapur'

I fancy revisiting one of Iris Murdoch's late novels, The Book and the Brotherhood (Penguin, £9.99/£9.49). I read it when it first came out in 1987 and thought it was magnificent, so I'm curious to see what I think of it now, more than 20 years later. I'm curious, too, about The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid (Penguin, £7.99/£7.59). The reviews were interesting and, unusually, made me want to buy the book rather than run in the opposite direction.

From the Times Archive: A 1964 study of Iris Murdoch

Finally, in the fiction side of the suitcase, Rose Tremain's The Road Home (Vintage, £7.99/£7.59), which won the 2008 Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction. Witty, thoughtful, generous, it is a novel of our times and I am looking forward to reading it a second time and at a more leisurely pace.

In the nonfiction corner is a book that deserves a slow and steady reading, Richard Mabey's Beechcombings (Chatto & Windus, £20/£18). The beguiling subtitle, The Narratives of Trees, tells you everything that you need to know. It was a Christmas present, but so far I have only had the time to sneak in and regretfully out of its pages.

A perfect companion to Mabey's woodscapes is Robert Lacey & Danny Danziger's The Year 1000: What Life Was Like at the Turn of the First Millennium (Abacus, £6.99/£6.64). It's a month-by-month record of Anglo-Saxon life, both a slice of social history and the story of landscape, but with the gossipy, seductive tone of a chat with a neighbour over the garden fence. A treasure of a book.

Finally, and as much for research as reminiscence or pleasure, I will be packing my well-worn volume of The Lore of the Land: A Guide to England's Legends by Jennifer Westwood and Jacqueline Simpson (Penguin, £20/£18). Filled with folk tales, myths and auld rhymes going back hundreds, sometimes thousands of years, it's perfect for a holiday, the sort of book to pick up and put down at leisure, and you can start anywhere, finish anywhere. And after all this intellectual working out? Clearly, I shall need another holiday...

Kate Mosse is co-founder of the Orange Prize for Fiction and the author of the bestselling novels Labyrinth and Sepulchre. She is taking part in Independent Booksellers' Week.

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